


spiral fractures

by fateline (orphan_account)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood and Injury, M/M, aka keith freaking out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 00:03:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11817009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/fateline
Summary: Keith and Blue don’t have to like each other. That’s fine. He just needs her to let him the fuck in for once so Lance doesn’t bleed out on his watch.





	spiral fractures

The position is really awkward and painful.

Keith’s leg is starting to cramp, which is really, in hindsight, the least of his problems.

Keith is crouched, practically curled into Lance below the small ledge that’s hiding them from the view of the rebels, but the blaster fire isn’t making it any less of a ride through hell. His shoulder screams. Lance is supposed to be entering the code into the door’s keypad – supposed to, operative word, because he’s currently a lot better of a backrest than a door opener.

“ _Lance!”_

“Almost, hold on, stop _yelling_!” Lance tosses his rifle at Keith, and for a second he’s thinking, what the hell am I supposed to do with this?, when Allura’s dumb – and at the time, rather bull shit lesson where she’d wanted to “change things up” and practice with each other’s bayards – actually kicks in. He’s going to kiss her if they get out in one piece. Or. Two pieces. Because they’re Lance and Keith, so obviously, not one piece as his brain happily suggests.

The ledge makes a suspiciously creaky and ominous sound.

What’s left of his fraying patience shatters. “What the _fuck_ are you waiting around for?” Keith snarls.

He ducks out, shoots the two rebels running right at them and throws himself into Lance’s side again. The answering bolt a second later comes entirely too close to taking his head clean off his neck. That’d be awfully messy, but probably less than if they were caught.

“Get a fucking move on!”

“I’m _trying_.”

Keith can _hear_ the eyeroll.

“Stop squirming, just open the goddamn door!”

“I’m kinda trying to do, you know, exac—”

Lance too sort of stops when a bolt hits close to his hand. Keith fights back a yelp as he throws a hand over Lance’s shriek with his one good hand since the rest of the rebels are close and if they’re found by the main group, they’re dead, but gods, his shoulder is killing him. Keith’s never going to be able to apologize to Shiro about making him drop his portion of space goop that morning or play with Pidge their newest game console thing that he’s been forced into.

The door creaks open agonizingly slowly. “Come on, come on, come on,” Lance mutters lowly, and Keith peers out carefully. It’s a rather spacious hallway. He might be able to slip past like the last time they’d crashed that little Galra prison camp. “How many are there?”

Keith draws a sharp breath. “Five. Wait, six. What now?”

Lance’s fingers worry shakily around Keith’s shoulder. Keith grits his teeth. He knows Lance wouldn’t accidentally upset the wound – Lance isn’t dumb, as much as Keith likes to say sometimes. Keith just needs to shoot those six bastards with as minimal attention drawn as possible, _somehow_ , find their lions, _somehow,_ and get the fuck out, _somehow_.

“Keith,” Lance says cheerfully behind him. “You gotta tell Allura to get her sources to write more legibly next time. It turns out it was a four instead of a nine.”

What the fuck, Keith turns around to ask Lance if he’s been hit in the fucking head or something, this isn’t the time for humour, and—at first he honestly doesn’t understand.

There’s too much red.

Look. Red – Keith can take red.

Red is temperamental and red is anger, _passion,_ danger. Keith has watched the red gather and build up as people fall down. Keith has stood still in the screaming storm and weathered out the shrieks of fire against Red’s armour. Keith has watched his life flash before his eyes as Red goes limp under his hands, crashing down. A comet. A millimeter away from a fiery death, pulled up at the last second. He’s not a stranger to what the colour means and what it means to _be_ Red.

He’s just – it’s just nothing could’ve prepared him for _this._

Keith doesn’t know where it’s coming from, how it’s getting there, and why it’s there. Desperately, distantly, there’s this thought that someone else should be here taking over, right about now, thanks. Shiro. Shiro would know what to do right now. Allura would be a godsend. Even Coran, Hunk, Pidge, anyone.

Keith does have basic first aid knowledge, at least. Knows it’s too much though, and reaches out, as if to somehow stem the stream, but that – that’s dumb, isn’t it? “L-lance? Why are you,” he chokes off. Keith hates the way his voice cracks like he’s twelve all over again.

If Keith doesn’t voice it, if he closes his eyes, maybe this’ll all be a nightmare. He’ll be back in the desert on Earth, waking up with a dry throat, wet eyes, and an odd empty feeling of having lost something he’d never had. “You’re okay. Tell me you’re okay.”

Lance snorts, but its stopped short by the stiffness of his smile. “Sure.” Keith knows Lance’s smiles like the back of his hand. This one’s not here it all. Lance isn’t with him. “Looking fine as hell, aren’t I?”

Lance isn’t answering the question. Lance is smiling to hard, too bright.

“Fuck. Okay,” Keith says, with all too much calm that he certainly isn’t feeling. It’s okay, because Keith isn’t here. Keith isn’t in this fucking base with Lance making a puddle growing by the minute. Keith isn’t in the middle of nowhere with no way to contact the Castle – the communication’s been jammed. “Okay, can you walk?”

Lance raises an eyebrow expectantly.

“Okay. Okay, you can’t walk, I’m assuming.” Lance is still looking at him like he’s dumb – alright, for the hell of it, maybe he is, but Lance – Lance might also be bleeding out right now, holy fuck, and then what’s Keith supposed to do? “Can you do anything to stop,” Keith says, and swallows, “the, uh, bleeding?”

Lance’s eyebrow goes even higher. “I only have my hands on me right now, yeah.”

“We can,” Keith starts, and pauses. What can they do? The way to the other exits are blocked by the rebels scouring the base right now. They’d be on them within minutes, anyway, if neither he nor Lance did anything. “We could find another exit. I mean, there’s gotta be one somewhere, right? Or, maybe I could shoot the guards. I could kill them and then I’ll get you out before the rest come, or...” Keith trails off. Lance is shaking his head.

“Look.” Lance’s voice is softer and more tired than Keith has ever heard it before, and the refusal comes out of Keith’s mouth before he can even help it. Lance isn’t supposed to look this done, this scared.

“No,” he says.

Lance huffs.

“No, listen. I—I can feel Blue in the next room over. Connected to the hall in front of us. If we get to our lions, rest should be smooth sailing. You feel Red?” There’s no boats in this, a small part of Keith says hysterically.

Keith’s mind snaps back to the more pressing matter at hand. “Not really. She’s somewhere in the base but you’ve always been able to pinpoint where your lion is at better than me.” Usually saying something like that would leave some form of resentment sitting in his stomach – he’s just admitted to losing to Lance, and if Lance isn’t chasing him then – then why would he look at him?

_Lance won’t be able to look at anything anymore if you don’t hurry up,_ his brain reminds him helpfully.

_Thanks,_ he tells it. _Don’t I fucking know._

“Carry me?” Lance ventures, softly once again, and Keith fucking hates it but its breaks his reverie anyway. He rolls his shoulder; it protests severely and angrily. He—he doesn’t want to say no because he owes Lance at least this much, if not his whole life, but he doesn’t think he can even walk with the arm carrying any weight. Lance breathes out. “Even if I can’t make it to Blue, no use for both of us to just sit here. Might as well see if they’re keeping Red there too.”

Every single nerve in Keith is rebelling against the idea; he shouldn’t be leaving Lance alone this injured for this absurd speculation that what if Red’s in the next room over – there’s so many things that could come into play here. What if there’s a huge number of troops guarding the lions? The rebels should know what exactly they could do if they fell back into their hands.

“I’ll carry you over with me,” Keith says. He shouldn’t have hesitated earlier – now Lance wants him to go on by himself. “I’ll – I’ll carry you somehow. It’s not as bad as yours, I’ll just hold you somehow so you don’t bother my shoulder, I can—”

“No,” Lance says again. It’s all Keith has heard from him the whole time, Keith swears to god.

“I can carry you.”

“You’d be,” Lance says unimpressed, “a sitting duck. A lying duck.”

Lance has a point, but that doesn’t mean Keith can just _leave_ him here, defenseless—

“Give me your bayard, alright, stop balking, just go! They’re gonna be onto us soon anyway and I’m like, literally bleeding out,” Lance prods, with more steel in his voice.

“That’s the exactly the problem! You are bleeding out and a fat chance you’re gonna stand against a bunch of blasters with a sword as a bayard! What the fuck are you gonna do, fight them from ten feet away?”

Lance has his hand out, palm up. “I can fucking deflect, can’t I? Take mine and shoot anyone who notices you when you run in there.” This. Keith’s brain blanks. This is a monumentally bad idea at best, and suicidal – not even at worst but like, normal case scenario. “Allura and the Garrison always said running targets aren’t nearly that easy to shoot, didn’t they?”

Keith’s feet stay stuck in place. Lance smiles again and it’s surprising how much it fucking hurts. Keith wants to rip that smile off Lance’s face— “Lance—” because Lance shouldn’t be _smiling_ like that.

Lance forces a shooing motion. “I’m okay. Go!”

Okay, his ass.

Keith goes.

He takes the first few steps carefully. This sneaking around has never been his forte – he’d always preferred the straight confrontation of sword against armour, or something tangible and cutting at the least; the satisfying connect as Red’s attacks decimate the enemy lines. This is not. This is quite fair from it, and Keith grits his teeth. The fall of one foot in front of the other is agonizing. He’s far from breaking out into a run and it’s a conflicting feeling: the puddle pushes behind him, and the advantage of another second undetected pulls him back.

It all goes to shit a breath away from the mouth of the room. He doesn’t know what exactly. Maybe it’s the gleam of his suit, or—or whatever fucking else there could be in the shitshow of a base, or maybe the guard just suddenly started paying attention again, but caution flies out the window.

Keith sprints into the room and for a horrifying moment, doesn’t see a lion at all. The room is dark but spacious – there’s dim illumination from the lighting strips on the wall, but that’s it.

He scans the area. Manages to scrape his heart off the floor – it’s not Red – stop that, he tries to tell the traitorous fall of his heart. He shouldn’t have expected it, and he didn’t, but some part of Keith had hoped. But – Blue sits crumpled and chained to the end of the room and. And Keith hopes it’s enough. He’s never talked to Blue before.

Keith is across the room in seconds. He feels her presence like something physical. It’s a hand pressing at the back of his eyes, a prickle at the base of his neck. Blue’s here – but she’s not responding to him.

“Blue?”

No change.

“Blue. You there?”

Keith feels distinctly dumb in this moment. He’s talking to a robot lion – sentient, maybe, but she’s not moving and very much inanimate right now.

Keith tries a different route. “Lance is in trouble.” The gleam he sees run through her eyes is probably wishful thinking, because she makes no other move. He sees the rebels flooding the room – they’re kept at bay probably by the fear of Blue but it won’t take long for them to realize it’s the fucking Red Paladin trying to coax the Blue Lion to listen to him. He glares up at Blue. “I need to get back to Lance!”

Blue remains still. It’s a blank line in his head. The rejection stings.

The rebels open fire.

A blaster bolt hits Blue just to the right of where Keith is standing. He throws himself behind her side – her armour’s made to be able to withstand fire of this level. “I need to go back to Lance,” Keith snarls. “I don’t have time for your shit! I fucked up, I’m sorry, are you happy? He shouldn’t have had to take that shot and now he’s—” Not bleeding out, please, please, please not bleeding out— “I’ve gotta get the hell back so just listen to me!”

Keith returns fire. He’s able to take out the first line of the rebels, but there’s more, shit, is that them calling for reinforcements? What if they find Lance, how long has Keith been gone for?

 “Fuck, I should’ve—” _Should’ve covered Lance; should’ve been guarding him close enough so that he wouldn’t get hit in the first place, he trusted his back to me. Should’ve not fucked up the one time that it actually mattered, shit._ You can yell at me all you’d like later, he promises Blue in his head. He rests his hand against her side. “I have to go back and help Lance, _I promised_.”

The stillness stretches on into the grave. Keith doesn’t dare move.

“Blue?”

She sheds the chains like shedding water. She turns to him, and Keith can’t help the relieved smile that breaks.

The fight with Blue on their side is a joke. The rebels part before them or go down – some messed up form of Moses parting the red sea – or rebel sea, whatever. Lance. Fuck. Keith guides Blue to the corridor outside, and thank the heavens, Lance is still propped there waiting.

Keith rushes out and slides Lance’s arm over his shoulder. Lance’s lips look blue. He’s so pale, but his eyes. His eyes are bright and looking at him and that’s good isn’t it, Lance is lucid, at least. His lips are shaping words, just breaths coming out, and Keith tilts his head in.

“Second thought. Maybe not doing the hottest.”

Keith isn’t religious. It’s dumb, they’re in the middle of literal nowhere, he’s seen people die before his eyes and could do nothing to help. He looks up, curls his hand more tightly into Lance’s side. Tries to draw him closer. They make it to Blue’s cockpit, and then Blue’s taking off.

He stares down at Lance limp in lap.

“Stay with me,” Keith whispers, bows his head, and prays.

**Author's Note:**

> with thanks to yui for editing this and ripping it apart to make it better <3
> 
> reviews would be so so appreciated!! any feedback is good feedback aksdnsjdf


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